The Jupiter-8 was Roland’s first truly professional analog synthesizer. The Jupiter-8 features 16 rich analog oscillators at 2 per voice, eight voice polyphony and easy programming! At eight voices you can get some pretty thick analog sounds. Easy and intuitive programming via front panel sliders, knobs and buttons for all your tweaking needs. The legacy of the Jupiter synthesizers is due to their unique voice architecture and design, creating sounds that were so unreal and amazing that they have to be heard! No other synths in the world can create analog sounds as cool and authentic as these.

The Jupiter-8 was the biggest and fattest of them all (Jupiters and Junos)! It was one of the first synths to allow its keyboard to be split and layered – it’s eight voices of trance heaven! Cross-mod, oscillator sync, a great LFO and a classic arpeggiator are also on-board. There’s also a killer resonant analog low pass filter, same as the Juno-6 / 60, with the added option of choosing 2-pole (12 dB/oct) or 4-pole (24 dB/oct) modes as well as a separate high-pass filter. Unfortunately for the earlier models, tuning was very unstable but that seemed to be resolved in later models. Unlike its smaller counterpart, the Jupiter-6, the Jup 8 does not feature MIDI, only Roland’s DCB sync can be found on some models. However, MIDI retro-kit’s are available from various companies. Patch presets can store keyboard splits, arpeggiator settings, voice assign mode, hold, portamento and modulation settings.

Yet another FM synthesizer from Yamaha, this one comes in a compact, multitimbral, 1-unit rackmount module and is basically a key-less version of the DX-11. It has far more professional features than its relative, the FB-01. The TX81Z features great FM type synth sounds similar also to the DX-21 and DX-27. It’s still not as good as the classic DX-7, but it’s an inexpensive source of those sounds with lots of programmability. Eight voice polyphony, 128 preset sounds, 32 user and lots of functions hidden behind 11 push buttons.

The TX81Z features a new ability to use waveforms other than just a sine wave. There are eight voices that can be split, layered and detuned. Also onboard are pseudo-effects including delay and reverb. These features can be stored as performance setups. The effects are simply envelope and re-triggering effects. The TX81Z works great as a sound-module for any live or studio production. It’s got a wider range of sounds than the DX-7, may not be quite as warm or ‘classic’ sounding, but at its low price and with the excellent MIDI implementation it makes a great alternative or backup synth for percussive, punchy FM synth sounds.

Moog’s Source was their first to offer patch memory storage as well as some other new features. It boasted 16 memory locations so you could finally save and recall your synth patches. A casette-tape jack was also implemented to transfer your patches to and from an external tape and free up the on-board memory for additional new patches. But in an effort to modernize with the eighties, the Moog had replaced all buttons, knobs and sliders with flat-panel membrane buttons and a single data-wheel assignment format. At the time, this may have seemed far-out, but in all actuality it is the Source’s downfall.

Parameters are edited not with hands-on sliders and knobs but by assigning a selected parameter to the dedicated data wheel. This is very tedious and does not allow for true hands-on tweaking during performances nor can you adjust different parameters simultaneously or while playing. These days, the membrane buttons don’t always seem to work quite right either. However, those famous monophonic Moog sounds are still inside this synth which has two fat analog oscillators and the legendary 24 dB Moog filter.

This a test to show the functionality of the Octave-Plateau VPK-5 Keyboard and the Voyetra 8 Synthesizer Module working.

We used a XLR cable as needed for the keyboard controller input. For audio output we used a dual mono TS to single TRS cable going through a mixer and amplifier. And also used the mono output through a powered monitor.